Well, I have started working - working, as they say, 'for myself'. There's one substantial editing job beginning to come in, with other, smaller things in the offing and lots of business and office set-up work still to do. Work that I needed and yet dreaded, still feeling pretty tired and crazy and floating now in this new, open, frightening context.
Work - great relief - feels good: a competent and reassuring rhythm regained. Familiar and yet unfamiliar too, since there's a whole new challenge to approach things differently, more carefully and spaciously, though not without a realistic sense of time and efficiency.
With country, continent and world in frightening chaos, perhaps the worst in my lifetime, attempting to control and improve the structure of an individual life feels foolish and presumptuous. But what else is there to do? Despair and apathy, for sure, can only contribute to the chaos, while individual hope and creativity might just, a million times multiplied, be a bit helpful.
One piece at a time, I guess, like piling fruit into a giant bowl.